Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

I'm new to bitcoin & the forums. I've been searching for this in the forums, but no luck yet. I've been wondering is it possible to build a modern miner scratch from parts? And if so, how difficult & what would costs be?

Thanks for you help.

Sure - all you need is a half million to start with for ordering ASIC chips from Bitfury, then a bunch more money to design and build an actual miner around those chips.

While nothing is impossible, this is highly highly highly improbable. Any reason you would want to take on a project like this that will take months to do versus just buying a nice new miner?

No way you can do it in the current market situation and with zero knowledge on electrical design.
Sorry.

What you can do though, is do upgrade boards.
You need old Antminer S1, S3, S5.
Then see my Hotmine thread (link in my signature) and buy a kit from them.

Is it still feasible to build miners for Ethereum? Won't be "cheap" necessarily, but if you're into building your own rigs/computers, it could still be an option for him.

OP is new, so probably isn't aware of the Altcoin options.

I see, is that the same for LTC & other crypto miners as well?


Main reason is cost, but I've always liked a good project as well (built PCs in past), and it seems like building a miner might be exciting if it worked out!

Why you not build using GPU? build mining rig.

of course it is and it may be cheaper to build your own. the difficulty will be based on the person's technical ability or ability to learn new technology quickly or the ability to follow instructions for things they never built before. I would expect the cost to be lower just like it would be to build your own computer however I could be wrong since I never built a miner before.

My question is: why would you want to build miner on your own?

it's probably going to be a very complex process, I've never built one. The whole point about this sort of equipment is to earn money. So the first course of actions is to get a returns on your investment. It might take you a couple of months.

Now suppose you build your own miner, and saved... let's say (and be very optimistic) a grand $. Consider the learning process and time it will take you to assemble equipment. At the very end you'll spend an additional month or two, which could be spent on mining with a purchased miner.

So, from where I stand it seems like, building your own miner will not be much different in terms of money savings from buying a ready one. With all the time it will take you, I think you'll be very close to breaking even, in best case. So ... the entire thing is pointless

But i might be wrong.

Did anyone ever done something like that and compared the ROI?

Nobody has because it takes so much knowledge of components and software to simply configure a miner to work on CGminer, etc., and it takes so long (example is Sidehack, who has help ofc and needs to also crank out batches of his new miner, but it takes him months to make usable examples of his miner). He's be the guy you would ask for something like that, and even he gets chips from old Antminers and supposedly Bitfury. You could ROI, sure, but like you said, if you made a single miner and mined with it till you made your money back, you could make more just buying one straight up and mining. And it saves time.

 There is apparently ONE ASIC maker selling Scrypt chips (I'd guess Innosilicon, but the Moonlander II thread never answers that question).
 NOBODY is selling X11 chips at this point - and Baikal seems completely uninterested in selling their multi-algo chips.
 Bitfury AFAIK is the only SHA256 chip maker selling chips.

 No other algo has ASIC available at this point (SIA has had one announced miner but it's not being delivered yet).


 Basically, it amount to "you better be a LARGE mining farm/manufacturer for the economics to even have a prayer of making sense to design and build your own miner", unless you're designing a small niche product (like the Moonlander or Sidehack's sticks/pods).

If you have engineer degree and a lot of money you could buy ASIC miner disassemble it and reverse engineer.

And why would you even bother. Only to satisfy your sense of curiosity and accomplishment I guess.

And all you would have is metal tube and a pile of parts. The key part of a miner is the circuitry inside the ASIC's and one is NOT going to reverse engineer that without several 100k$ worth of SEM gear to look at the pattern layers after decapping the chips followed by needing several million$ to even get a foundry to talk to you about making your knock-off chips.

Building a rig for mining is very much possible even with scrap computer parts as long as it is still usable.   The only problem is that the electric power it will consume.  IT is very a power hungry industry.  So before you build.  consider all the needed component before proceeding to build one..

Yeah but he's asking about building a modern miner, and mentioned bitcoins, and using "scrap computer parts" for bitcoin mining kinda stopped being "modern" approximately five years ago.

I read people were building Avalons tho right? I assume using existing parts on the market not spending millions or have ASIC's made

Yeah, Avalon was selling chips to third-party integrators for a while. In 2013 and 2014. If you can get ASICs, integration isn't terribly difficult. But getting the ASICs is.

Building Avalons ??? Certainly not the latest gen ones. Just *where* did you read that?
No, folks are buying them. Canaan does not sell bare chips nor does Bitmain.

Sure they do!

https://shop.bitmain.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020160416053348855GEgP3cx0067E

;) - Yes, I know, but it's funny.

Wait for Bitmain S9s to go back on sale, and buy 750 of them. Alternatively, you could purchase 1700 AvalonMiner 721s. You’ll need a building to put them in, power supplies, adequate cooling and more than a megawatt of electricity.

Yeah but if you buy S9s you'll have a couple months to get your building ready before they arrive.

Bro, you'd better take a part in bounty&airdrop. Start with that. Mining is for high professionals maniacs=)

That would be great if we coud build our own miner, but it's just impossible.
Miners have such system features that make it impossible to build that system in primitive conditions.

The only part that's not relatively straightforward is the ASIC itself. Let someone with millions of dollars do that part, then talk him into selling you some. And then make a miner around 'em. It's not too bad if you have a background in electrical and computer engineering and a good programmer or two at your disposal.

To maximize your mining potential higher model or the latest model in graphic cards is the best way to start with.  You can build one from scratch but if you are planning to use out modeled graphic cards, you might be ending with a higher electricity costs yet less in bitcoin mine.  Search one in the internet what is the latest graphics cards you can use to mine with...

GPUs have been irrelevant in BITCOIN mining for four years. You've already given that advice in this thread and it's still just as irrelevant.

The OP said BITCOIN miner not Piece Of Shi* altcoin miner.
As Sidehack and far too many others have had to repeat here over and over GPU's will not work for mining Bitcoin. Period. End of story.